A great new ice cream place opened up a few years ago on the far side of a field that's behind the neighbor's houses that I can see out my window. Now, here's the problem... Google Maps keeps putting the restaurant icon on the wrong side of the field, leading people who are looking for the ice cream place to drive up my residential street looking lost. Plot the icon on the satellite map, and you'd think it's a shed behind a house... nope that's not right.
The original GPS maps were confirmed by Google-like driving of every road in the nation with a GPS enabled vehicle that recorded where it was and the fact that there was in fact a road there. Now, with the ability to build 2-way communication GPSes, why can't maps be generated by "I didn't know there was a road there... what's the name of the road you used there?" interactions that upload the results to a central server? This would be a great way to map the private roads many people use to connect from the public street to an office or mall.
Drive Southbound on Route 3 in MA with a route in your GPS that has you headed South on I-495, and you'll be presented with three routes that tell you to get off Route 3 well before I-495 despite the fact there's a perfectly good direct ramp there.
How'd this happen? Your GPS is pre-programmed with the "fact" that that offramp is constantly backed up and therefore you should seek alternate routes. However, that's absolutely not true. How'd this mistaken info get there? Residents of the area intentionally caused traffic disruptions on the days years ago when GPS mapping companies were in the area so that people would be routed further away from their homes. The trick worked, and the mistaken info remains on the maps.
There's got to be a better way to confirm the existence or non-existence of such must-avoid intersections.
What was the main use for the Realtek Semi certificate that's being revoked? I would hate to see a bunch of SmoothWall/Untangle implementations shut down by having their network drivers revoked....
The 99 cent fee sounds like 1. An excuse to charge the credit card presented as ID, 2. A way to make back the credit card fees and cost of having a person review the transaction.
A: Give a presentation at Black Hat. B: Schedule a presentation of Black Hat, only to have to pulled and then a release of that fact leads to a discussion of that not-ready-for-Black-Hat topic here on Slashdot. C: Call CowboyNeal and ask him to post a story.
You can't buy a cell phone in the USA without either giving your identity, or giving the police permission to tap the line to wait for you to ID yourself.
Post-paid plans already require a credit check that takes your SSN and associates it with the account. If the account changes hands, a new credit check is done on the new identity... no way to hide who you are in this environment.
You could argue that a pre-paid plan can be paid for with untraceable cash... but if large amounts of prepaid phone minutes are bought with cash and they can't figure out why, the price for the service will go up. Top up with just one identifiable payment and it's tied to the phone forever.
The anonymous phone call has gone the way of the pay phone... gone!
Does this mean an accomplice has to hang around within 3m of the pump?
No. What it means is that there's no need for there to be a wire that leads to the skimmer's recording device... which now can be hidden in the next pump over. This also means the mag reader could be placed in the pump without a recording device, therefore requiring the pump to be taken apart for inspection, adding to the cleanup costs.
Remember, once a fraud becomes so expensive to clear up that the expenses are greater than the total loss, then it's almost allowed to continue unchecked.
University cops do the bidding of the school... they're more into securing physical spaces and crowd control than anything in the tech sphere. But there's some part of the school that handles the misbehaving students, and they're the ones to contact. You've got your $1000 laptop missing, they get to threaten his $30,000-$120,000 investment in education.
This is the threat the RIAA/MPAA loves to use, they don't have the school police raid the computer, they just get the school admins to hammer the kid.
I don't know the exact number, but a blank credit report equates to a pretty good FICO score. Sure, you get no points for good history, but that also means you have no bad marks getting in your way either. It more or less is based in the "Fool me once, shame on you... fool me again and shame on me!" logic. President Bush had a little problem remembering that phrase.;)
Yep. The correct way to play the game is to have a credit card, and pay it off every month. Resist the temptation to let balances slide from month to month, claim you rewards points, and you'll profit most.
No kind of card is perfect. Prepaid cards come with the highest mandatory fees, debit cards put your entire bank balance at risk, credit cards hope you can't pay off what you bought, and don't get me started on store gift cards.
That's the point... debit card fraud costs less than the cost of fixing it, credit card fraud costs more than doing something about it, so they do something about it.
Add this latest story to the antenna issue, and it's looking like Apple shipped a rotten one. You can't have a big win every time without some risk of losing once in a while. Be glad if you're holding on to an iPhone 3G(s) from last year... you got most of the good features from the new operating system while the new hardware doesn't seem ready for prime time. Give them a year to fix the problems, and we'll wait for the iPhone 4G...
Yes and no. If you process a "check card" (I have a Visa one) as credit, it takes a few days to work through (they show up as grey in my e-banking register, instead of black). And if you report a lost/stolen card within 2 days of noticing it, you're limited to $50.
And furthermore most major banks will forgive that $50 the law allows them to deduct, calling the program $0 Lost/Stolen Card Liability. But, the problem is while they're verifying your claim, you don't have your money. You'll get it back in a few days, but they won't pay your Late Fee on your other obligations that you were going to pay with money you thought you had in the account.
USPS: The service you use when if it gets lost, it's not your loss. Insurance available if money can replace what you lost. UPS/FedEx: The services you use when you want to know where your package is, possibly change the delivery address or pull it back before it's out for delivery, and want confirmation that it got there or at least was dropped at a secure location like a mailroom or co-branded store location.
There's a reason why UPS and FedEx can charge much more for moving a piece of paper... they do it with a whole lot more features than USPS could ever offer.
I lost a job a little over a year ago. The government made my employer pay for insurance for in case they let me go for no fault of my own, and they didn't make a claim that it was my fault when they let me go, so I'm still collecting a weekly payment from the government where the biggest catch is that I have to make an effort to get another job. My benefits are about to run out, but 58 out of 99 US Senators (We'll miss you Mr. Byrd!) seem to think the government should pay for me to get more weekly checks, such a bill already passed the US House of Reps and would certainly be signed if it reached the President's inbox.
Yep. The government doesn't have a duty to protect me... they just like to and I'm not going to tell them to stop.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep. Live traffic senors would solve the puzzle... but they're just not there yet.
A great new ice cream place opened up a few years ago on the far side of a field that's behind the neighbor's houses that I can see out my window. Now, here's the problem... Google Maps keeps putting the restaurant icon on the wrong side of the field, leading people who are looking for the ice cream place to drive up my residential street looking lost. Plot the icon on the satellite map, and you'd think it's a shed behind a house... nope that's not right.
The original GPS maps were confirmed by Google-like driving of every road in the nation with a GPS enabled vehicle that recorded where it was and the fact that there was in fact a road there. Now, with the ability to build 2-way communication GPSes, why can't maps be generated by "I didn't know there was a road there... what's the name of the road you used there?" interactions that upload the results to a central server? This would be a great way to map the private roads many people use to connect from the public street to an office or mall.
Drive Southbound on Route 3 in MA with a route in your GPS that has you headed South on I-495, and you'll be presented with three routes that tell you to get off Route 3 well before I-495 despite the fact there's a perfectly good direct ramp there.
How'd this happen? Your GPS is pre-programmed with the "fact" that that offramp is constantly backed up and therefore you should seek alternate routes. However, that's absolutely not true. How'd this mistaken info get there? Residents of the area intentionally caused traffic disruptions on the days years ago when GPS mapping companies were in the area so that people would be routed further away from their homes. The trick worked, and the mistaken info remains on the maps.
There's got to be a better way to confirm the existence or non-existence of such must-avoid intersections.
What was the main use for the Realtek Semi certificate that's being revoked? I would hate to see a bunch of SmoothWall/Untangle implementations shut down by having their network drivers revoked....
Somebody at the paper most likely needs to cross check the name with somebody who's on public record as living in the paper's coverage area.
The 99 cent fee is for a one-time validation of your ID. After that point, you're free to post as much as you want.
The 99 cent fee sounds like 1. An excuse to charge the credit card presented as ID, 2. A way to make back the credit card fees and cost of having a person review the transaction.
Slashdot has for a long time had a way of filtering the trolls out, why can't a newspaper have their own scheme to do so?
Which way gets more Slashdot buzz?
A: Give a presentation at Black Hat.
B: Schedule a presentation of Black Hat, only to have to pulled and then a release of that fact leads to a discussion of that not-ready-for-Black-Hat topic here on Slashdot.
C: Call CowboyNeal and ask him to post a story.
And it's not just phones there too... a WiFi-only iPad falls under the same policy.
You can't buy a cell phone in the USA without either giving your identity, or giving the police permission to tap the line to wait for you to ID yourself.
Post-paid plans already require a credit check that takes your SSN and associates it with the account. If the account changes hands, a new credit check is done on the new identity... no way to hide who you are in this environment.
You could argue that a pre-paid plan can be paid for with untraceable cash... but if large amounts of prepaid phone minutes are bought with cash and they can't figure out why, the price for the service will go up. Top up with just one identifiable payment and it's tied to the phone forever.
The anonymous phone call has gone the way of the pay phone... gone!
Does this mean an accomplice has to hang around within 3m of the pump?
No. What it means is that there's no need for there to be a wire that leads to the skimmer's recording device... which now can be hidden in the next pump over. This also means the mag reader could be placed in the pump without a recording device, therefore requiring the pump to be taken apart for inspection, adding to the cleanup costs.
Remember, once a fraud becomes so expensive to clear up that the expenses are greater than the total loss, then it's almost allowed to continue unchecked.
The IP most likely is part of the suspect's University block... indicating that University = ISP.
University cops do the bidding of the school... they're more into securing physical spaces and crowd control than anything in the tech sphere. But there's some part of the school that handles the misbehaving students, and they're the ones to contact. You've got your $1000 laptop missing, they get to threaten his $30,000-$120,000 investment in education.
This is the threat the RIAA/MPAA loves to use, they don't have the school police raid the computer, they just get the school admins to hammer the kid.
I don't know the exact number, but a blank credit report equates to a pretty good FICO score. Sure, you get no points for good history, but that also means you have no bad marks getting in your way either. It more or less is based in the "Fool me once, shame on you... fool me again and shame on me!" logic. President Bush had a little problem remembering that phrase. ;)
I'm talking to owners of previous iPhones who hesitated to stand in line for the new one.
Yep. The correct way to play the game is to have a credit card, and pay it off every month. Resist the temptation to let balances slide from month to month, claim you rewards points, and you'll profit most.
No kind of card is perfect. Prepaid cards come with the highest mandatory fees, debit cards put your entire bank balance at risk, credit cards hope you can't pay off what you bought, and don't get me started on store gift cards.
Do you really think there's a live Slashdot editor at all times? More like this was discovered a week ago and put in the SlowNewsDay(TM) file.
The USA is still in a holiday weekend period right now, try again tomorrow morning.
That's the point... debit card fraud costs less than the cost of fixing it, credit card fraud costs more than doing something about it, so they do something about it.
Add this latest story to the antenna issue, and it's looking like Apple shipped a rotten one. You can't have a big win every time without some risk of losing once in a while. Be glad if you're holding on to an iPhone 3G(s) from last year... you got most of the good features from the new operating system while the new hardware doesn't seem ready for prime time. Give them a year to fix the problems, and we'll wait for the iPhone 4G...
Their biggest threat is an employee not doing as instructed. Like lowering the standards on mortgages they buy in credit swaps...
Yes and no. If you process a "check card" (I have a Visa one) as credit, it takes a few days to work through (they show up as grey in my e-banking register, instead of black). And if you report a lost/stolen card within 2 days of noticing it, you're limited to $50.
And furthermore most major banks will forgive that $50 the law allows them to deduct, calling the program $0 Lost/Stolen Card Liability. But, the problem is while they're verifying your claim, you don't have your money. You'll get it back in a few days, but they won't pay your Late Fee on your other obligations that you were going to pay with money you thought you had in the account.
USPS: The service you use when if it gets lost, it's not your loss. Insurance available if money can replace what you lost.
UPS/FedEx: The services you use when you want to know where your package is, possibly change the delivery address or pull it back before it's out for delivery, and want confirmation that it got there or at least was dropped at a secure location like a mailroom or co-branded store location.
There's a reason why UPS and FedEx can charge much more for moving a piece of paper... they do it with a whole lot more features than USPS could ever offer.
I lost a job a little over a year ago. The government made my employer pay for insurance for in case they let me go for no fault of my own, and they didn't make a claim that it was my fault when they let me go, so I'm still collecting a weekly payment from the government where the biggest catch is that I have to make an effort to get another job. My benefits are about to run out, but 58 out of 99 US Senators (We'll miss you Mr. Byrd!) seem to think the government should pay for me to get more weekly checks, such a bill already passed the US House of Reps and would certainly be signed if it reached the President's inbox.
Yep. The government doesn't have a duty to protect me... they just like to and I'm not going to tell them to stop.